FIFA under fire for World Cup ticket application fee

Sales of tickets for next year’s football World Cup tournament in Germany will be raised by MEPs at next week’s mini-plenary session of the European Parliament in Brussels (30 November and 1 December).

European Voice

11/23/05, 5:00 PM CET

Updated 4/12/14, 12:05 PM CET

The FIFA organising committee is offering the possibility to buy online tickets for the competition subject to certain conditions.

Applicants are required to pay in advance without knowing whether they will get their tickets as the final allocation of tickets only takes place in February 2006.

Those who do not get tickets will only be reimbursed after the tournament in July 2006. All applicants will be charged a non-refundable fee.

The arrangements will be raised during a debate on sport on Wednesday afternoon.

According to Liberal MEPs Toine Manders and Alexander Lambsdorff, FIFA is abusing its monopoly on ticket sales for the competition.

"It means that rejected applicants will not have access to their own money for several months," said Dutch deputy Manders.

He said the practices of football's governing bodies FIFA and UEFA were "at odds with internal market legislation and EU competition law" and the Commission should intervene.

Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd said the competition directorate-general had written to FIFA asking for information.

A FIFA spokesman said: "The method of selling tickets for next year's tournament is not different to the way we have done things in the past."

n MEPs will vote on Wednesday on a report which calls for procedural changes to Parliamentary confirmation hearings for new EU commissioners.

UK Liberal Democrat MEP Andrew Duff's report says that a joint committee, comprising political group leaders and committee chairs, should be set up to give a final assessment of a new Commission president and candidates for commissioners.

It also calls on the Council of Ministers to bring forward the next European Parliament elections from June to May 2009 to enable newly elected MEPs to evaluate commissioners-elect.

Duff said his recommendations aimed to bring a "coherent approach" to the hearing process so that all Parliamentary committees evaluated commissioners-designate on the same basis.